Tag Archives: Russia

Russia raises specter of permanent or ‘world war’ if Syria talks fail

MUNICH (Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev raised the specter of a permanent or a world war if powers failed to negotiate an end to the conflict in Syria and warned against any ground operations by U.S. and Arab forces.

Medvedev, speaking to Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper on the eve of a security conference in Munich, said the United States and Russia must exert pressure on all sides in the conflict to secure a ceasefire.

Asked about Saudi Arabia’s offer last week to supply ground troops if a U.S.-led operation were mounted against Islamic State, he said:

“This is bad as a ground offensive usually turns the war into a permanent one. Just look at what happened in Afghanistan and many other countries. I don’t need to remind you what happened in poor Libya.”

“The Americans and our Arab partners must think well: do they want a permanent war?” It would be impossible to win such a war quickly, he said according to a German translation of his words, “especially in the Arab world, where everybody is fighting against everybody”.

“All sides must be compelled to sit at the negotiating table instead of unleashing a new world war.”

Russia is carrying out bombing sorties around the key city of Aleppo, in support of advances by troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. and other Western air forces are also involved in air strikes in northern Syria.

THE “PRIZE” OF ALEPPO

Capturing Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war but now divided between rebel- and government-held sectors, would represent a major military victory for Assad and a symbolic prize for Russia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday that Moscow had submitted proposals for implementing a ceasefire in Syria and was waiting for a reaction from international powers.

Lavrov was speaking ahead of a meeting in Munich with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss Syria.

Members of the United Nations Security Council pressed Russia on Wednesday to stop bombing Aleppo in support of the Syrian military offensive and allow humanitarian access ahead of a meeting of major powers in Germany on the conflict.

“You have no one power that can act alone,” Medvedev said. “You have Assad and his troops on one side and some grouping, which is fighting against the government on the other side. It is all very complicated. It could last years or even decades. What’s the point of this?”

(Reporting by John Irish, reporting by Joseph Nasr; editing by Ralph Boulton)

NATO agrees to deter Russia from attacks, but avoids Cold War footing

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO agreed on Wednesday its boldest steps yet to deter Russia from any attack in the Baltics or eastern Europe, setting out ways to rapidly deploy air, naval and ground forces without resorting to Cold War-era military bases.

In an effort to dissuade Moscow after its 2014 annexation of Crimea, NATO defense ministers will rely on a network of new alliance outposts, forces on rotation, warehoused equipment and regular war games, all backed by a rapid-reaction force.

“Russia is a threat,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Juozas Olekas told Reuters at an alliance meeting in Brussels. “It is Moscow’s actions in Crimea, their support for separatists in Ukraine and their snap exercises that concern us”.

The measures, which British Defense Minister Michael Fallon said proved that “NATO means what it says”, showed a unity the West has not been able to muster against Russia in Syria, where the United States faces criticism for not stopping the Russian-backed assaults on rebel-held areas of Aleppo.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the Munich Security Conference later this week to stress the defensive nature of NATO’s strategy for the Baltics and eastern Europe.

“We believe that especially when times are difficult, as they are now, it’s even more important that we have political dialogue, channels open, between NATO and Russia,” he said.

Russia denies it has acted aggressively. Moscow blames the West for stirring anti-Russian feeling across the east, particularly in Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, which it considers its historic sphere of influence.

The crisis in Ukraine, where the West accuses Russia of fomenting a separatist rebellion, and the Western economic sanctions on Moscow have raised concerns about a new Cold War.

Non-NATO member Georgia, which fought a five-day war with Russia in 2008 that left two of its regions occupied by Russian military, also warned NATO to be on alert. “With the Kremlin, nothing can be excluded,” Tinatin Khidasheli, Georgia’s defense minister, told Reuters. “They cannot show weakness.”

Poland’s new conservative government has been the most vocal in calling for permanent NATO bases on its territory and while Warsaw has now agreed to the new lighter military presence, its defense minister Antoni Macierewicz signaled that difficult talks over troop numbers lie ahead.

WANTED: MONEY, TROOPS

Initial discussions suggest NATO could have a brigade of up to 1,000 troops in each of the six former communist countries, once under Moscow’s domination, that the alliance is looking to reinforce: Lithuanian, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania. They will be backed by a rapid-reaction force that includes air, naval and special operations units of up to 40,000 personnel.

Asked about whether a 1,000-troop presence was acceptable, Macierewicz said: “From our point of view it is clearly too little.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the plan aimed to move NATO to a “full deterrence posture” to thwart any aggression but cautioned: “It’s not going to look like it did back in Cold War days.”

In the past, the United States stationed some 300,000 troops in Europe and NATO wants to avoid any such posture because of the costs and also so as not to further antagonize the Kremlin.

Britain said it would contribute two warships to a NATO maritime groups this year, sending one frigate to the Baltic.

Another difficult issue is the funding for the deterrent, which Stoltenberg has said “does not come for free.”

The United States’ is seeking a $3.4 billion budget for European reassurance initiatives in 2017, a four-fold increase in Washington’s spending in the region to rotate more troops through the region and provide more tanks and other support.

Carter, speaking to reporters traveling with him to Brussels, said it was important for all NATO allies to increase military spending. “I’ll be looking for others in NATO to echo (us) in our investment,” Carter said.

Stoltenberg said he received new commitments from other NATO allies on Wednesday, but said it was too early to give details.

(Writing by Robin Emmott, editing by Larry King and Dominic Evans)

Putin may benefit from historic meeting of pope and patriarch

VATICAN CITY/MOSCOW (Reuters) – A meeting between Pope Francis and Russia’s Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on Friday could not happen without a green light from President Vladimir Putin, diplomats and analysts say, and he may be one the beneficiaries.

In a landmark step towards healing the 1,000-year-old rift between the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity, the two religious leaders will meet in Havana on the pope’s way to Mexico.

“There is no doubt the Kremlin took part in making this decision,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political analyst and former Kremlin adviser in Moscow. “Otherwise the meeting would not have happened.”

Putin has aligned himself closely with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), making Friday’s two-hour private meeting not just a religious event but politically charged as well, especially when Russia is at odds with the West over Ukraine and Syria.

“Putin clearly sees the value of his relationship with the ROC and the ROC’s relationship with the pope,” said a diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“He understands the pope is a big player on the world stage and I think that he would be happy about having the possibility of using the improved relations between the Vatican and the ROC to get the Kremlin’s view across to the Vatican,” he said.

Alexander Volkov, Russian church spokesman, said that while a joint declaration will dwell on the Middle East’s persecuted Christians, tensions between Russia and the West may be brought up in the talks.

“This is one of the burning issues and we can assume it will be reflected in the dialogue. It can’t be ruled out,” he said.

DIFFERENT POPE, WARMER TIES

Relations between Moscow and the Vatican have improved steadily since the reign of Pope John Paul II, a Pole who had an inbred suspicion of Russia and who died in 2005. But Francis is an Argentinian with no historical baggage associated with the East-West divisions of Europe after World War Two.

In 2013, Moscow was pleased after Francis opposed a proposed U.S.-led military intervention in Syria, a key Russian ally.

Last year, Catholics in Ukraine accused Francis of being soft with Moscow when he described violence in Eastern Ukraine as “fratricidal”. They saw it as a product of foreign aggression.

One commentator said Francis’ view was perhaps “blurred by ecumenical correctness” in the hopes of a meeting with Kirill.

In an interview with Reuters, Cardinal Kurt Koch, head of the Vatican office for Christian unity, was non-committal when asked if the meeting could help Putin. “I think Putin agrees with the meeting, but I can’t say more,” he said.

Russia’s ambassador to the Vatican, Alexander Avdeyev, said the two Churches organised the meeting but that it could “help politicians and diplomats” with policy decisions.

“The two Churches clearly understood that all threats and challenges in the world threaten both of them and cooperation has to be stepped up to fight nationalism and terrorism,” he told Reuters.

The meeting, which will put another historic notch on Francis’ legacy, came after two years of secret contacts in Rome, Moscow and Havana, Vatican and diplomatic sources said.

Agreement was clinched last autumn but the ROC wanted to keep it under wraps for several more months, one Vatican source said.

The Russian Church had long accused Catholics of trying to convert people from Orthodoxy after the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. The Vatican denied the charges and both sides say that issue has largely been resolved.

One sore point remains the fate of church properties that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin confiscated from Eastern Rite Catholics in Ukraine and gave to the Russian Orthodox there. After the fall of communism, Eastern Rite Catholics took back many church properties, mostly in western Ukraine.

The meeting was brokered by Cuban President Raul Castro, who hosted the pope in Cuba last year. The Vatican helped arrange the rapprochement between Cuba and the United States.

(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Russian firepower helps Syrian forces edge toward Turkey border

BEIRUT/ONCUPINAR, Turkey (Reuters) – The Syrian army advanced toward the Turkish border on Monday in a major offensive backed by Russia and Iran that rebels say now threatens the future of their nearly five-year-old insurrection against President Bashar al-Assad.

Iranian backed-militias played a key role on the ground as Russian jets intensified what rebels call a scorched earth policy that has allowed the military back into the strategic northern area for the first time in more than two years.

“Our whole existence is now threatened, not just losing more ground,” said Abdul Rahim al-Najdawi from Liwa al-Tawheed, an insurgent group. “They are advancing and we are pulling back because in the face of such heavy aerial bombing we must minimize our losses.”

The Russian-backed Syrian government advance over recent days amounts to one of the biggest shifts in momentum of the war, helping to torpedo the first peace talks for two years, which collapsed last week before they had begun in earnest.

The Syrian military and its allies were almost three miles from the rebel-held town of Tal Rafaat, which has brought them to around 16 miles from the Turkish border, the rebels, residents and a conflict monitor said.

The assault around the city of Aleppo in northern Syria has prompted tens of thousands to flee toward Turkey, already sheltering more than 2.5 million Syrians.

In the last two days escalating Russian bombardment of towns northwest of Aleppo, Anadan and Haritan, brought several thousand more, according to a resident in the town of Azaz.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war with 2 million people, has been divided for years into rebel and government-held sections. The government wants to take full control, which would be its biggest prize yet in a war that has already killed at least 250,000 people and driven 11 million from their homes.

Rebel-held areas in and around Aleppo are still home to 350,000 people, and aid workers have said they could soon fall to the government.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted at the weekend as saying Turkey was under threat, and Ankara has so far kept the border crossing there closed to most refugees.

There are now around 77,000 refugees taking shelter in camps on the Syrian side of the Turkish border, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Monday. He said that a worst-case scenario could see as many as 600,000 at Turkey’s border.

After around a week of heavy Russian air strikes, Syrian government troops and their allies broke through rebel defenses to reach two Shi’ite towns in northern Aleppo province on Wednesday, choking opposition supply lines from Turkey.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was “appalled” by the suffering of Aleppo, blaming primarily Russian bombing and suggesting it violated a U.N. Security Council resolution Moscow signed in December.

Kerem Kinik, Vice President of the Turkish Red Crescent, told reporters at the Oncupinar border crossing that Syrians were fleeing Russian strikes in panic. The closure of the road to Aleppo risked a much larger scale repeat of crises in Ghouta, a besieged Damascus suburb, or even Madaya, a blockaded town were residents have starved.

“The route to Aleppo is completely closed and this is a road that was feeding all the main arteries inside Syria. Unless this is reopened, you will see Aleppo falling day by day into a similar situation as in Madaya and Ghouta and you will see a deepening humanitarian crisis,” he said.

“They are hitting any vehicles that are on the move, they are hitting aid trucks,” he added. “We really urge that the Russian attacks on Azaz and Aleppo should stop, because if there is such a policy to clear this area of all human beings… then we may not be able to cope with the influx.”

SUPPLY LINE

The Syrian army’s success in opening a route to the Shi’ite towns of Nubul and Zahraa enabled it to cut a highway that linked rebel held areas in the northern countryside with the eastern part of Aleppo held by insurgents since 2012.

The latest gains by the Syrian government bring it to the closest point to the Turkish border since August 2013, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The capture of the towns of Mayer and then Kafin, just north of Nubul and Zahraa, in the past 24 hrs have opened the road toward Tal Rifaat, the next focus of the army assault. The capture of that would leave only the town of Azaz before the Turkish border itself.

The loss of Azaz, just a few miles from the Bab al Salama border crossing, would virtually wipe out insurgents from one of their main strongholds in northwest Syria, though they still control much of nearby Idlib province.

Russian bombing has for weeks targeted rebel routes to the main border crossing, once a major gateway from Europe and Turkey to the Gulf and Iraq, lately a lifeline for rebel-held areas in Idlib and Aleppo provinces.

The army’s advance has also been indirectly helped by Kurdish-led YPG fighters who control the city of Afrin, southwest of Azaz. They have seized a string of villages in recent days, rebels and the Observatory said.

In a multi-sided civil war that has drawn in global and regional powers, the Kurds are the strongest allies on the ground in Syria of a U.S.-led coalition bombing Islamic State in eastern Syria and northern Iraq. Turkey supports other rebel groups against Assad and is hostile to the Syrian Kurds, which it sees as allies of its own Kurdish separatists.

Russia joined the war last year with air strikes that it says are aimed at Islamic State, but which Turkey, Arab states and the West say are aimed mostly at other opponents of Assad.

Four months of Russian air strikes have tipped momentum Assad’s way. With Moscow’s help and allies including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian fighters, the Syrian army is regaining areas on key fronts in the west.

United Nations investigators called for new sanctions on Syrian officials as well as leaders of the two most hardline rebel groups, Islamic State and the Nusra Front, accusing the three of mass killings, torture and disappearances of civilians in custody.

Speaking in Ankara, Merkel, under fire at home over the refugee crisis, said Europe needed to follow up quickly on pledges of aid to help Turkey cope with the Syria exodus, and also urged Ankara to act fast to improve the situation for refugees.

(Additional reporting by Nick Tattersall in Istanbul, Yesim Dikmen and Ercan Gurses in Ankara and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; writing by Suleiman al-Khalidi and Philippa Fletcher; editing by Peter Graff and Pravin Char)

Thousands flee as Russian-backed offensive threatens to besiege Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Syrians fled an intensifying Russian assault around Aleppo on Friday, and aid workers said they feared the major city could soon fall under a full government siege.

Iran reported one of its generals had been killed on the front line, giving direct confirmation of the role Tehran is playing along with Moscow in what appears to be one of the most determined offensives in five years of civil war.

The government assault around Aleppo, and advances in the south and northwest, helped to torpedo Geneva peace talks this week. Russia’s intervention has tipped the war President Bashar al-Assad’s way, reversing gains rebels made last year.

The last two days saw government troops and their Lebanese and Iranian allies fully encircle the countryside north of Aleppo and cut off the main supply route linking the city – Syria’s largest before the war – to Turkey. Ankara said it suspected the aim was to starve the population into submission.

Aleppo would be the biggest strategic prize in years for Assad’s government in a conflict that has killed at least 250,000 people and driven 11 million from their homes.

Video footage showed thousands of people massing at the Bab al-Salam crossing on the Turkish border. Men carried luggage on their heads, and the elderly and those unable to walk were brought in wheelchairs. Women sat on the side of the road holding babies and waiting to be allowed into Turkey.

Rights group Amnesty International urged Turkey to let in those fleeing the latest violence, after reports the border remained closed.

“It feels like a siege of Aleppo is about to begin,” said David Evans, Middle East program director for the U.S. aid agency Mercy Corps, which said the most direct humanitarian route to Aleppo had been severed.

“The situation in Aleppo is a humanitarian catastrophe,” said an opposition spokesman still in Geneva after the ill-fated peace talks. “The international community must take urgent, concrete steps to address it.”

NON-STOP RUSSIAN AIR STRIKES

“The Russian (air) cover continues night and day, there were more than 250 air strikes on this area in one day,” Hassan Haj Ali, head of Liwa Suqour al-Jabal, a rebel group fighting in northwest Syria, told Reuters.

“The regime is now trying to expand the area it has taken control of,” he added. “Now the northern countryside (of Aleppo) is totally encircled, and the humanitarian situation is very difficult.”

Syrian state TV and a monitoring group said the army and its allies had seized the town of Ratyan north of Aleppo. Haj Ali said the town had not yet fallen, but that there were “very heavy battles”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said some 120 fighters on all sides had been killed around Ratyan.

Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV and Syrian state TV later on Friday said forces had taken another nearby town, Mayer.

The Syrian army and its allies broke a years-long rebel blockade of two Shi’ite towns in Aleppo province on Wednesday, cutting off a major supply line from Turkey to Aleppo.

Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub, has been divided for years between a section under government control and areas in the grip of rebels. Much of the UNESCO heritage old city is in ruins.

Any government siege would target the rebel-held parts, where more than 350,000 people live. Well over a million live in the areas under government control.

Haj Ali said most of the fighters on the government side were “Iranian and from Hezbollah, or Afghan”.

A non-Syrian senior security source close to Damascus told Reuters on Thursday that Qassem Soleimani, commander of foreign operations of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, was overseeing operations in the Aleppo area.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said Revolutionary Guard Corps Brigadier-General Mohsen Ghajarian had been killed in Aleppo province, as had six Iranian volunteer militiamen.

The five-year-old civil war pits the government led by Assad, a member of the Alawite sect derived from Shi’ite Islam, against a range of insurgents who are mainly Sunni Muslims, backed by Saudi Arabia, other Arab states and Turkey. Western countries have lined up in opposition to Assad.

Since 2014, the Sunni jihadist group Islamic State has run a self-proclaimed caliphate in eastern Syria and Iraq, under air assault from a U.S.-led coalition. Russia launched its own separate air campaign four months ago to aid its ally Assad, transforming the battlefield.

But swathes of the country are still in the hands of armed rebels, including Islamic State in the east, Kurdish militia in the north, and a mosaic of groups in the west who have been the target of many of the Russian air strikes.

ARMY GAINS IN DERAA

Syria’s government forces and allies have made further gains in the southern province of Deraa, recapturing a town just outside Deraa city.

It has been backed by some of the heaviest Russian air strikes since it began its bombing campaign in September, a rebel spokesman in the area said.

The talks convened this week in Geneva were the first diplomatic attempt to end the war in two years but collapsed before they began in earnest. The opposition refused to negotiate while Russia was escalating its bombing and government troops were advancing.

NATO said Moscow’s intensified bombing campaign undermined the peace efforts and warned Russia was creating tensions by violating the airspace of Syria’s neighbor Turkey, a NATO member which shot down a Russian warplane in November.

Russia has accused Turkey of preparing a military incursion into northern Syria. Ankara dismissed this as propaganda intended to conceal Russia’s own “crimes”. Aleppo was threatened with a “siege of starvation”, and Turkey had the right to take any measures to protect its security, it said.

Moscow says its targets in Syria are restricted to Islamic State and al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, both of which were excluded from peace talks and unacceptable to the countries supporting the insurgents against Assad.

“Why did the opposition that left Geneva complain about the offensive in Aleppo, which is actually targeted against Jabhat al-Nusra (Nusra Front) and other radical extremist groups?” said Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Alexey Borodavkin.

That position is rejected by Western and Arab countries, which say most Russian strikes are against other opponents of Assad, not the banned groups.

Nusra Front said in a statement on Friday it had killed 25 Iranian fighters and Shi’ite militiamen in fighting in Aleppo.

“The intense Russia air strikes, mainly targeting opposition groups in Syria, is undermining the efforts to find a political solution to the conflict,” said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Russian violations of Turkish airspace were “causing increased tensions and … create risks”.

Saudi Arabia said it was ready to participate in separate U.S. ground operations against Islamic State. The United States welcomed the Saudi offer, although Washington so far has committed only to small scale operations by special forces units on the ground in Syria.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul, Parisa Hafezi in Ankara and Tom Miles in Geneva; writing by John Davison and Peter Graff; editing by Andrew Roche)

Russia and Turkey trade accusations over Syria

BEIRUT/MOSCOW/LONDON (Reuters) – Russia said on Thursday it suspected Turkey was preparing a military incursion into Syria, as a Syrian army source said Aleppo would soon be encircled by government forces with Russian air support.

Turkey in turn accused Moscow of trying to divert attention from its own “crimes” in Syria, and said Aleppo was threatened with a “siege of starvation”. It said Turkey had the right to take any measures to protect its security.

In another sign of the spreading international ramifications of the five-year-old Syrian war, Saudi Arabia said it was ready to participate in ground operations against Islamic State in Syria if the U.S.-led alliance decided to launch them.

The United Nations on Wednesday suspended the first peace talks in two years, halting an effort that seemed doomed from the start as the war raged unabated. Washington said on Thursday however it was hopeful they would resume by the end of the month, and Russia said it expected that no later than Feb. 25.

Donors convened in London to tackle the refugee crisis created by the conflict. British Prime Minister David Cameron said they raised $11 billion for Syrian humanitarian needs over the next four years.

Turkey said at the conference up to 70,000 refugees from Aleppo were moving toward the border to escape air strikes.

BORDER MARCH

Footage online showed hundreds of people, mostly women, children and the elderly, marching toward Turkey’s Onucpinar border gate, carrying carpets, blankets and food on their backs.

Four months of Russian air strikes have tipped the momentum of the war Assad’s way. With Moscow’s help and allies including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian fighters, the Syrian army is regaining areas on key fronts in the west.

Russia’s defense ministry said it had registered “a growing number of signs of hidden preparation of the Turkish Armed Forces for active actions on the territory of Syria”.

Any Turkish incursion would risk direct confrontation between Russia and a NATO member.

“The Russians are trying to hide their crimes in Syria,” said a senior official in Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s office.

“They are simply diverting attention from their attacks on civilians as a country already invading Syria. Turkey has all the rights to take any measures to protect its own security.”

In London, Davutoglu said the “humanitarian logistic corridor” between Turkey and Aleppo was “under the invasion of these foreign fighters and regime forces (with) the support of Russian warplanes”.

“What they want to do in Aleppo today is exactly what they did in Madaya before, a siege of starvation,” he added.

Davutoglu pledged that whatever the cost Turkey’s door would remain open to all Syrians. It has already taken in more than 2.5 million.

Relations between Russia and Turkey have deteriorated badly since Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border in November.

ALEPPO, STRATEGIC PRIZE

Aleppo, just 50 km (30 miles) south of the Turkish border, is a major strategic prize in the war and is currently divided into areas of government and opposition control. Many of the rebels fighting in and around the city have close ties to Turkey.

This week, three days of intensive Russian bombing helped the army and allied fighters to sever a major supply line to the northwest of the city, in the process reaching two Shi’ite towns loyal to the government for the first time in 3-1/2 years.

The army source said operations to fully encircle Aleppo from the west would be launched soon.

A senior, non-Syrian security source close to Damascus said Iranian fighters had played a crucial role.

“Qassem Soleimani is there in the same area,” said the source, referring to the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force responsible for overseas operations.

Residents thanked Assad, Iran and Hezbollah in celebratory scenes from the Shi’ite towns of Nubul and al-Zahraa broadcast by Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV.

The powerful Kurdish YPG militia, which controls wide areas of northern Syria, meanwhile added to the pressure on insurgents, capturing two villages near Nubul and al-Zahraa, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The Syrian Kurds have consistently denied opposition claims that they cooperate with Damascus.

All diplomatic efforts toward ending the conflict have failed. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the latest steps in peace talks were undermined by increased aerial bombing. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura announced a three-week pause.

“I think the special envoy decided to suspend the talks because the organization did not want to be associated with the Russian escalation in Syria, which risks undermining the talks completely,” a U.N. official told Reuters.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, foreign minister of Iran, called in London for the talks to resume and for an immediate ceasefire. But he said later that should not mean stopping military operations against “recognized terrorist organizations”, naming the Nusra Front and Islamic State.

REBELS HOPE FOR MORE WEAPONS

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov had agreed on the need to discuss how to implement a ceasefire in Syria during a call on Thursday.

Rebel commanders said they hoped the peace talks’ collapse would convince their foreign backers, including Saudi Arabia, that it was time to send them more powerful and advanced weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles.

Assad’s foreign opponents have been funneling weapons to vetted rebel groups via both Turkey and Jordan.

One rebel leader said he expected “something new, God willing” after the failure of the Geneva talks.

Another rebel commander said: “They are promising to continue the support. In what form, I don’t yet know … How it will crystallize, nobody knows … We need to wait.”

Both spoke on condition of anonymity.

While vetted “Free Syrian Army” rebels have received weapons including U.S.-made guided anti-tank missiles, their calls for anti-aircraft missiles have gone unanswered mostly because of fears they could end up in the hands of powerful jihadist groups such as the Nusra Front, which are also fighting Assad.

A Russian defense ministry spokesman said a Russian military trainer was killed in a mortar attack on Feb. 1.

“They (Russian military servicemen) are not taking part in ground operations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We are talking about advisers. This is linked to teaching Syrian colleagues to operate equipment which is being delivered to Syria under existing contracts.”

A Saudi general said the kingdom was “ready to participate in any ground operations that the (U.S.-led) coalition (against Islamic State) may agree to carry out in Syria”.

Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, who is also the spokesman for the Saudi-led Arab coalition fighting Iranian-backed forces in Yemen, was speaking to Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV.

(Additional reporting by Istanbul, Washington and Dubai bureaux; editing by Andrew Roche)

Ukraine’s president sees increased risk of open war with Russia

BERLIN (Reuters) – The risk of open war between Russia and Ukraine is greater than it was a year ago and Russian President Vladimir Putin has begun an “information war” against Germany, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told the German newspaper Bild.

Poroshenko, who met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Monday, said Russia had implemented “not one single point” of the Minsk accord, which includes a ceasefire between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

Russia was building up its military presence on the border with Ukraine, he said.

“The danger of an open war is greater than last year,” Poroshenko told Bild, in an interview published in its Wednesday edition. “Russia is investing a great deal in war preparations.”

Merkel pressed Putin by phone on Tuesday to use his influence to ensure that a ceasefire is upheld in Ukraine and that monitors from the OSCE European security organization are granted free access to conflict areas, her spokesman said.

Berlin is growing increasingly suspicious that Russia is trying to stir up trouble in Germany to try to weaken Merkel, who has taken a tough line on a crisis that was triggered when Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014.

German officials say Moscow hopes to destabilize Europe and create a vacuum into which it can project its own power.

“Now Putin has opened an information war against Germany as well,” Poroshenko said.

German concerns about Moscow grew last month after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the German authorities of “sweeping problems under the rug” over an alleged rape case involving a German-Russian girl.

The case of the 13-year-old, named only as Lisa F., caused controversy after she told police that she had been kidnapped in east Berlin last month by migrants who raped her while she was held for 30 hours.

The Berlin public prosecutor’s office has since said a medical examination found she was not raped.

When asked if Russia had used the case to try to stir up tensions around immigration, Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, told reporters on Wednesday: “We cannot agree with such accusations.”

“On the contrary, we were keen that our position be understood, we were talking about a citizen of the Russian Federation,” he added. “Any country expresses its concerns (in such cases). It would be wrong to look for any hidden agenda.”

(Additional reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Syrian al Qaeda affiliate ‘much more dangerous’ than ISIS, new report says

While the United States continues its military campaign against the Islamic State, a new report charges that a different terrorist organization poses a greater long-term threat to the country.

Jabhat al Nusra, a Syrian al Qaeda affiliate, “is much more dangerous to the U.S. than the ISIS model in the long run,” according to a report released Friday by the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute.

“Any strategy that leaves Jabhat al Nusra in place will fail to secure the American homeland,” the report cautions.

The report offers a scathing critique of the United States’ anti-terrorism efforts in Iraq and Syria, saying the military campaign “largely ignores” Jabhat al Nusra, a group that “will almost certainly cause the current strategy in Syria to fail.”

It also argues the challenges facing the United States have been oversimplified, and warns a “collapse of world order” could allow the Islamic State and al Qaeda to grow stronger.

The report’s authors argue the United States must choose a new strategy, writing “passivity abroad will facilitate the continued collapse of the international order, including the global economy on which American prosperity and the American way of life depend.”

According to the report, Jabhat al Nusra differs from the Islamic State in its ideologies and practices. While the Islamic States seizing cities and imposes its will on civilians, brutally mistreating anyone who dissents, Jabhat al Nusra has taken a friendlier approach. It has aligned with several groups that oppose Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a key point of contention in the nation’s ongoing civil war, and provided those groups with “advanced military capabilities.”

In doing so, the report says Jabhat al Nusra “has established an expansive network of partnerships with local opposition groups that have grown either dependent on or fiercely loyal to the organization.” The institutes charge the front has become so engaged with the opposition, it’s now “poised to benefit the most” from the downfall of the Islamic State and Assad’s removal.

“The likeliest outcome of the current strategy in Syria, if it succeeds, is the de facto establishment and ultimate declaration of a Jabhat al Nusra emirate in Syria that has the backing of a wide range of non-al Qaeda fighting forces and population groups,” the report states. Such an emirate would be a key component of al Qaeda’s global terror network, providing manpower and resources to other affiliates while “exporting violence into the heart of the West.”

The report calls al Qaeda and the Islamic State “existential threats” to Europe and the United States, and concludes that while the groups don’t currently have the ability to topple the West, they — along with broader turmoil in the world — threaten the way of life in those nations.

The report argues there are several public misconceptions about national security in the United States, namely that the Islamic State is the nation’s only enemy. The situation is far more complex, the report argues, and stretches far beyond the borders of the Middle East.

Groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are benefitting from events such as North Korea’s nuclear testing, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Europe’s ongoing migrant crisis, the report’s authors wrote, calling them “symptoms of a collapsing world order” that exacerbate the threat.

Conflicting policies of Iran, Russia and China have also helped fuel the collapse, the report says.

“The collapse of world order creates the vacuums that allow … organizations such as al Qaeda and ISIS to amass resources to plan and conduct attacks on scales that could overwhelm any defenses the United States might raise,” the report states. “Even a marginal increase in such attacks could provoke Western societies to impose severe controls on the freedoms and civil liberties of their populations that would damage the very ideals that must most be defended.”

Ukraine to review cyber defenses after airport targeted from Russia

KIEV (Reuters) – Ukrainian authorities will review the defenses of government computer systems, including at airports and railway stations, after a cyber attack on Kiev’s main airport was launched from a server in Russia, officials told Reuters on Monday.

Malware similar to that which attacked three Ukrainian power firms in late December was detected last week in a computer in the IT network of Kiev’s main airport, Boryspil. The network includes the airport’s air traffic control.

Although there is no suggestion at this stage that Russia’s government was involved, the cyber attacks have come at a time of badly strained relations between Ukraine and Russia over a nearly two-year-long separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine.

“In connection with the case in Boryspil, the ministry intends to initiate a review of anti-virus databases in the companies which are under the responsibility of the ministry,” said Irina Kustovska, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s infrastructure ministry, which oversees airports, railways and ports.

Ukraine’s state-run Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) issued a warning on Monday of the threat of more attacks.

“The control center of the server, where the attacks originate, is in Russia,” military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said by telephone, adding that the malware had been detected early in the airport’s system and no damage had been done.

A spokeswoman for the airport said Ukrainian authorities were investigating whether the malware was connected to a malicious software platform known as “BlackEnergy”, which has been linked to other recent cyber attacks on Ukraine. There are some signs that the attacks are linked, she said.

“Attention to all system administrators … We recommend a check of log-files and information traffic,” CERT-UA said in a statement.

In December three Ukrainian regional power firms experienced short-term blackouts as a result of malicious software in their networks. Experts have described the incident as the first known power outage caused by a cyber attack.

A U.S. cyber intelligence firm in January traced the attack back to a Moscow-backed group known as Sandworm.

The Dec. 23 outage at Western Ukraine’s Prykarpattyaoblenergo cut power to 80,000 customers for about six hours, according to a report from a U.S. energy industry security group.

Ukraine’s SBU state security service has blamed Russia, but the energy ministry said it would hold off on attribution until after it completes a formal probe.

(Editing by Matthias Williams and Gareth Jones)

U.S. helping Ukraine investigate December power grid hack

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday it was helping Ukraine investigate an apparent attack last month on the country’s power grid that caused a blackout for 80,000 customers.

Experts have widely described the Dec. 23 incident at western Ukraine’s Prykarpattyaoblenergo utility as the first known power outage caused by a cyber attack. Ukraine’s SBU state security service has blamed Russia for the incident, while U.S. cyber firm iSight Partners linked it to a Russian hacking group known as “Sandworm.”

In an advisory, DHS said they had linked the blackout to malicious code detected in 2014 within industrial control systems used to operate U.S. critical infrastructure. There was no known successful disruption to the U.S. grid, however.

DHS said the “BlackEnergy Malware” appears to have infected Ukraine’s systems with a spear phishing attack via a corrupted Microsoft Word attachment.

The DHS bulletin from the agency’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team, or ICS-CERT, is the first public comment about the Ukraine incident.

A report released by Washington-based SANS Inc over the weekend concluded hackers likely caused Ukraine’s six-hour outage by remotely switching breakers in a way that cut power, after installing malware that prevented technicians from detecting the intrusion. The attackers are also believed to have spammed the Ukraine utility’s customer-service center with phone calls in order to prevent real customers from communicating about their downed power.

DHS and the FBI did not immediately respond to requests for additional comment.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz and Jim Finkle; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Andrew Hay)